SC turns death into RI for MLA killers
Not being the “professional killers” has been seen by the Supreme Court as a valid reason for reducing the death sentence into rigorous life sentence of two “supari killers” of a Jharkhand MLA. They were hired by a coal mafia to bump the legislator for taking on them and exposing their massive coal theft racket.
Though the top court spelt out four main reasons for converting the death sentence of the hired killers — Sheo Shakar Singh and Umesh Singh — to RI for life, the first and foremost of them was that the murderers were not “professional killers”.
The Jharkhand high court had awarded them capital punishment holding that it was a well-planned assassination of a legislator, who had exposed the illegal activities of coal mafie and therefore, the crime fell in “rarest of the rare” category to award the death penalty to the duo.
Reversing the high court verdict, a bench comprising Justices V.S. Sirpurkar and T.S. Thakur, however, said “We are of the opinion that the high court was not justified in imposing the extreme penalty of death upon the appellants. We say so for reasons more than one. Firstly, because the appellants are not professional killers.” The convicts had bumped Chatterjee on April 14, 2000 firing several shots on him while he was pillion riding a motorbike with his son Arup Chatterjee. near Dhanbad. The trial court had convicted in all five members of the coal mafia for the legislator’s assassination and awarded them RI for life but the high court acquitted three of them — Narmedeshwar Prasad Singh, Bijay Singh and Mohd Nooren giving them benefit of doubt — and enhanced the sentence of Sheo Shakar Singh and Umesh Singh to death by hanging.
The high court had said the two executed a well-planned conspiracy to eliminate the MLA who had waged a war against coal mafia exposing their widespread racket of illegal sale of coal, a precious national asset and their crime definitely fell in the “rarest-of-rare” category and they did not deserve any mercy.
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